The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2016 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on November 3, 2016, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

The ugly saga of the relationship between a self-professed
outlaw and a psychotic crack whore.

This drug-fueled,
Beat-influenced slab of a novel arrives with a bizarre pedigree. Tattoo artist–turned-novelist
Shaw (Love Songs to the Dead, 2009, etc.) is the son of jazz great Artie
Shaw and the contemporary of kindred spirits ranging from Iggy Pop to Lydia
Lunch, who contributes an introduction. Here, his 2007 debut novel (originally
published by indie Heartworm Press) has been shepherded to republication by
Johnny Depp. Unfortunately, this novel about an obsessed bandito and the raging
lunatic he falls for is trying so hard to mimic other writers’ styles that it ultimately
doesn’t find much to say that is new or different from its influences. Our
narrator is Ignacio Valencia Lobos, known on the streets of Rio de Janeiro as
“Cigano,” or gypsy. After years running heroin between Mexico and California,
Cigano has kicked his habit in prison and come home. “Wide awake now. Picking
up the shattered pieces of a faded, fuzzy little jigsaw puzzle nightmare called
Home,” he says. His life is pretty much destroyed when he meets Narcisa, a
glue-huffing, babbling poet/prostitute with a psyche shattered by childhood
sexual abuse, a zealous addiction to drugs and a broken patois that doesn’t
always sound authentic. That’s pretty much it for the next several hundred
pages—the damaged duo have violent, incensed sex, they fight, she leaves, she
comes back, and then the cycle starts all over again. He gets a little insight
into her condition from “Doc,” a kind of odd paternal figure to Narcisa. But
the cycle is always the same old same old when Cigano turns back up on Narcisa’s
doorstep. “So what if my love was for a psychotic, violent, abusive,
foul-mouthed, unsanitary crack whore with a hell-bent rage and an insatiable
appetite for destruction?” Ain’t love grand?

A mix-and-match novel
with the grunge of Bukowski, the teeth-grinding momentum of the Beats and the
acidic self-loathing of addiction novels.

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